EMMA the unsexy nursebot
posted Sep 24th 2004 12:37PM
We'll spare you the obvious jokes about hospital food (but probably won't avoid making one about the prospect of
sexy nursebots), but the Delta Regional Medical Center in Greenville, Mississippi is using the Pyxis HelpMate SP
Robotic Courier System to move stuff around in the hospital like meals for patients, medicine, lab samples, supplies,
and medical records. Once the hospital's floorplan has been programmed into it (along with info about how to deal with
the elevators), you just load the robot, which they've nicknamed the "EMMA" (which stands for Electronic Materials
Management Associate") up with whatever you want to sent and then tell it where you want it to go. Too bad it looks
like a photocopier on wheels, it's really ruining our secret fantasies about being tended to by futuristic
nursebots.
[Via Near Near Future]
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~nursebot/web/images9.html
Whoah, Crushinator!
I'm a doc who's worked in 3 different cities now over the last 8 years.
Most large university teaching hospitals and VA medical centers have been using these robots for the last 3 to 5 years or so.
They are great at making sure things (supplies, fluids, blood products, medications) end up where they're supposed to (non-emergently) and can be held better accountable (unlike humans). And hospitals have found that they are more cost-effective and often faster than humans since they don't take breaks or get "lost" in maze-like hospitals.
Most of them have a camera on them (used to catch passer-bys who may want to take a ride on/with them - as some hospital residents try to), and are very polite when something or someone is in their way.
They do get stuck in narrow corridors/corners and sometimes on elevators.
And some hospitals even put a face (from a photo-copied picture) on them, along with giving it a name that gets stenciled on. Ours is called Sammy (not sure why).
Hi! I'm a student nurse from Malaysia and currently preparing a debate title "Technologies affect nursing. Robot will replace a human nurse in the future." I'm in the proposition side and would like to hear about your view. Can you help? Thanks!
I'm in a rehab hostpital rigth now and have been here for over a month now after a realy bad car accident (two clean breaks in my feemers). But the other hostpital i was in (hartford hospital, CT) they had 2 of these, it cornered a friend of mine. Theres was called ugean or somethign like that.